Chrome becomes number one web browser for a day

Google Chrome became the world's top internet browser ahead of Internet Explorer for the first time last weekend, but only held the position for a single day.

According to data from web analytics company StatCounter, Chrome topped the polls in India, Russia and Brazil on March 18, helping it to temporarily become the number one browser on a global basis.

However, Chrome was only able to hold the number one spot for a brief period, before Microsoft's browser regained its position at the top of the tree.

StatCounter's data is based on more than 15 billion page views per month (including 4bn in the US) across a network of more than three million websites.

The company's chief executive Aodhan Cullen said that Chrome faces a big battle to beat its main rivals Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox. It remains in either second or third place in the key markets of China, the US and Germany.

However, Cullen said that whilst Chrome only had the global top spot for a single day, this still represents a "milestone" for Google's browser.

Particularly, he noted that StatCounter's findings show that people are mostly using Internet Explorer during the week on their work machines, but then switching to Chrome at the weekend on their own computers.

"Whether Chrome can take the lead in the browser wars in the long term remains to be seen; however, the trend towards Chrome usage at weekends is undeniable," he said.

"At weekends, when people are free to choose what browser to use, many of them are selecting Chrome in preference to IE."

According to StatCounter's data issued in January, Chrome's daily market share was 28% compared to Internet Explorer's 38%. However, Chrome is thought to have increased its global share to around 32%, while Microsoft's share has fallen over the same period.